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6

THE MEMOIRS OF ALAN CORNWALL

1827–42

LAN GARDNER CORNWALL (1798–1872) was rector of Newington Bagpath with Owlpen during the years of social distress leading up to the disastrous failure of the local woollen cloth trade in the 1830s,

culminating in the bankruptcy of the mill of Edward Sheppard of Uley in 1837. He was the second of three sons of John Cornwall (1772–1802), from a Hull

merchant family descended respectably from a younger son of the Cornwalls, an old family styled as barons of Burford in Shropshire.1 John was a partner with William Thornton in Thornton’s bank in London, by then known as Thornton, Cornwall & Co., and both partners were in the inner circle of the Clapham sect.

John Cornwall the banker was the seventh child and only son of John Cornwall (1713–1800), who moved south to live a life ‘of prosperity and benevolence’ at Hendon House in Middlesex. The house had been altered for him by John Soane in 1791 and 1798, with various additions, including stables and a coach house. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Watson, a merchant of Hull, who was a partner in various businesses with Robert Thornton. Samuel’s sister Lucy married John Thornton, of Clapham and Hull.

A complex cousinage knitted these families together, and their interests in business, philanthropy and evangelical reform. John Cornwall Jr, the banker, married Suzannah-Hall Gardner (1773–1802), the daughter of an admiral. The Gardners were a naval family from Coleraine, Ireland, who married into the Cornwalls several times over the generations. The memoirist was named after the most distinguished of them all, his maternal grandfather, Alan Gardner (1742–1809), an admiral and member of Parliament who was raised to the peerage in 1806. He was successively Admiral of the Blue (1799), of the White, and of the Red; a member of Parliament for Plymouth and (later) Westminster; created a baronet (1795), a baron of Ireland (1800) and finally first baron Gardner of Uttoxeter in the United Kingdom (1806).

Admiral Lord Gardner had ten children, two of whom married children of John Cornwall Sr. His fourth son, Herbert, born in 1781, married Mary-Anne Cornwall. His only daughter, Suzannah-Hall married John Cornwall, the London banker, in 1794; the parents of the author.

1 Cecil George Saville, 4th Earl of Liverpool, and Compton Reid, The House of Cornewall, Hereford, 1908, pp. 235, 255–. Cockayne points out that they were never summoned to Parliament, though the style persists in monumental inscriptions and records down to the late C17, suggesting that the title may indicate their illegitimate descent from Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III.

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That it was a happy marriage is shown by a letter of John Cornwall to his wife written in 1802: I have not a thing to wish for, a charming wife whom I love from my heart, a fine family full of health and strength, money enough to accomplish every wish in reason, and friends to use, I hope, if ever misfortune should befall me... A happier and more thankful man does not exist on God's earth.

Two and a half months later this life of harmony was shattered when John Cornwall died suddenly at Hendon, from an injury to his head on the staircase while coming down to dinner. He was buried in the family vault at Hendon, at just thirty years of age. The family history relates:

His young widow cared no longer for her once happy home, and quickly selling it, took her six little children to London, where she is remembered as a grande dame in Grosvenor place. She died more than fifty years later, and was buried in the vault at Hendon, having remained a widow for her children’s sake.

In spite of the set-back, the three sons of the marriage had successful careers. The eldest son John joined the Navy, retiring as a Rear-Admiral in 1870, a few months before his death. The youngest son, William Henry, born in 1799, was a Major-General in the Coldstream Guards, serving in the Regiment with Tom Kingscote; he became an equerry in the household of Queen Adelaide, and Marshal to Queen Victoria,

Alan Gardner Cornwall, the middle son, joined the Church. He describes his early life in the circle of his father’s friends of the Clapham sect in south London, where a group of earnest Anglican reformers, mostly recruited from the prominent merchant elite like the Thorntons, were known for their evident worthiness as ‘the Saints’.

The sect included distinguished churchmen centred around John Venn (1793–1813), rector of the Holy Trinity Church, Clapham, who supported the emerging evangelical revivial of the Church of England and was the son of Henry, the founder of the group. The elder generation included progressive merchants, bankers and philanthropists, like Zachary Macaulay, two Thorntons (Henry and Samuel), and William Wilberforce, also from a merchant family in Hull, and Granville Sharp. The latter were two of the leading campaigners against the slave trade and the driving force behind the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

Sharp may be one of the links through which Cornwall was brought to this corner of Gloucesterhire, though the memoir is silent concerning him and his family. Sharp was a noted scholar and administrator, whose daughter Mary married as his first wife Thomas John Lloyd Baker (1777–1841) of Stout’s Hill, Uley, which had been bought by his father c. 1785, and later of Hardwicke Court, Gloucester, which he bought from the Trye family in 1816 and rebuilt to the designs of Sir Robert Smirke. Sharp is shown in a conversation piece by Zoffany, ‘The Sharp Family’, for many years on loan to the National Portrait Gallery.

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After education in Leicestershire under a private tutor, The Rev. John Kempthorne, Cornwall went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where the first of his family recorded, William Cornwall, had graduated in 1639. Cornwall’s account describes the influence of the ‘very good set’ he joined, and his growing involvement with the various Christian missionary and tract societies which then flourished. He drops the names of his circle of well-connected Evangelical undergraduates, including the historian Thomas Babington Macauley, also son of an influentical member of the Clapham sect. This led on to his ordination as a minister in 1822 by Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Winchester, the influential tutor of William Pitt the Younger.

He spent six years as curate of Elvetham, near Southampton, before being presented to the living of Newington Bagpath-with-Owlpen, ‘a kind of call to a missionary situation’, where he arrived on 27 September 1827. According to Samuel Lewis, he paid for the rebuilding of Owlpen Church, completed to the designs of Samuel Manning in 1828–30. Presumably, the Stoughtons were absent at this time, with no suitable house on the estate available for their occupation.

His account of his rural ministry describes—sometimes with a hint of the obsequious fawning of a Mr Collins—his developing friendship with the Kingscote family of Kingscote. They had been settled as landowners since Norman times on the adjoining estate to Owlpen and had occasionally intermarried with the Daunts of Owlpen. Alan Cornwall was to marry the daughter of the house, Caroline Kingscote, within a year of settling in Gloucestershire, in 1828.

The local historian, John Smyth, writes touchingly of the squire Kingscote of Kingscote of the early seventeenth century:

It may be said of this family that … the present Mr Kingscote, and his lineall ancestors have continued in this little manor now about 500 years, never attainted or dwellinge out of it elsewhere, nor hath the tide of his Estate higher or lower flowed or ebbed in better or worse condition; but like a fixed starre in his firmament, to have remained without motion in this his little orbe without any remarkable change.2

Parson Cornwall lived like his wife’s Kingscote family without motion or remarkable change. He acquired the small estate at Ashcroft in Newington Bagpath, where he settled with his family and lived for 44 years of married life. Alan and Caroline, referred to as ‘Carry’, had fourteen children. Three of them died young. Two sons, Clement Francis and Henry Pennant, went on to establish a ranch named Ashcroft and small township in the arid highlands of British Columbia, where they lived as English squires, breeding Beaufort hounds to hunt coyotes instead of foxes. The eldest son, Alan Kingscote Cornwall (1830–1913), succeeded him as a country parson, rector of the adjoining parish of Beverstone-with-Kingscote which had been added to his father’s charge through the influence of Lord Melbourne in 1839.

2 III, 252.

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Alan Gardner Cornwall never strayed far from Ashcroft where he first arrived in rural Gloucestershire, the care of whose souls can hardly have been arduous. The high point of his career was his appointment as chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria, and his only published works were odd volumes of sermons, like the Assize sermon he preached for Tom Kingscote as sheriff, which he was proud to see through the press in 1842.

He died as he had lived at his house at Ashcroft, aged 74, in 1872, Caroline dying three years later. Both are buried in the Kingscote family vault in Kingscote churchyard. His principal legacy is the memoir he wrote, which was published in two small editions shortly after his death. It remains a poignant record of the social and economic history of this cluster of Gloucestershire parishes in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a period for which there is scant evidence elsewhere.

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The Memoirs of Alan Gardner Cornwall1 Rector of Owlpen and Newington Bagpath, 1827-42

1798

was born July 16th at 37, Grosvenor Place, Hyde Park Corner, London. The house, No. 37, was then the last house in the Place and the Place itself considered as out of Town, there being a Turnpike at the top of

the street towards Piccadilly and fields only between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Square.2 My father rented a garden, about quarter of an acre, about where Belgrave Chapel now stands, for vegetable and for us to play in.

I was baptized in the drawing room, as was the bad old custom of the day, and am registered in the Registry of St. George’s, Hanover Square.

My wet nurse was a Jewess, I have heard my mother say; my mother not nursing any of her children.

By the advice of Mr. Henry Thornton,3 I was educated under the Rev. J. Kempthorne,4 of Claybrook, who had been an intimate friend of Henry Mart[y]n.5 I was greatly helped by Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul given me by my tutor.6

1 First published as Extracts from the Reminiscences of Rev. Alan Gardner Cornwall between the years 1798 and 1842, specially in relation to his coming to Kingscote and his Ministry there, Devizes: C.H. Woodward [n.d.]. See bibliography. 2 His mother was still living at this address in 1837 (Boyle’s Court Guide). The Owlpen copy has here a marginal note by M.R. Lloyd-Baker, historian of Uley: ‘Miss Margaret Curtis-Hayward, of Quedgeley, tells me that her grandparents had the idea, one summer, of taking a house in Grosvenor Place, but were told that if they did so, they would need a second pair of carriage horses, being so far from the centre of London. They eventually took a house in Harley St.’ 3 Henry Thornton (1760–1815), economist, banker and philanthropist. Thornton was the son of John Thornton, supporter of the Evangelicals, a noted merchant and reformer, himself son of Robert, of Clapham Common, a director of the Bank of England. Henry joined the bank of Downe, Free & Thornton in 1784, and was MP for Southwark. He made significant contributions to monetary theory and became a leading member of the Clapham sect, sharing his house with Wilberforce, with whom he became a close associate. 4 Kempthorne, then curate of Claybrooke, Leicestershire, wrote the anthem ‘Surely, surely’. Venn (Alumni Cantabrigiensis) states he was educated at Iver, Bucks, by Mr Ward, described below as ‘my old friend and tutor’. 5 Henry Martyn (b. Truro 1781—d. Tokat 1812) was an evangelical scholar, fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge (where he was Senior Wrangler), the translator of the New Testament into Urdu, Persian and Arabic (revision), and a missionary in Bengal and Shiraz in Persia. His journals published as Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn (ed. J. Sargent) were an inspiration to the 19th-century missionaries (reprinted as Life and Letters of Henry Martyn, Pennsylvania, 1985). 6 Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), nonconformist minister and noted hymn writer. His Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) has been much translated. His many hymns include ‘Awake, My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve’ and ‘O Happy Day, That Fixed My

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Mr. William Thornton, a partner in my father’s Bank, helped me much, and I used to go and see him at Battersea. William Wilberforce, also a friend of my father’s, was very kind to me—I used to visit him at Kensington Gore and sit in his library—and he always had a kind word for us.7

I went up to Cambridge in October, 1816,8 and got into a very good set. Attended the Ministry of Charles Simeon, and became acquainted with him.9 Became friends with John Kennaway10 and his brother Charles, Henry Venn,11 Henry12 and Edward Elliott,13 Lord Bristol14 and Lord Macaulay.15

In 1817 I broke down in health and left England for the Continent, joining John Kennaway, who was travelling with Henry Elliott as his tutor, at St. Bernard, and we went on to Rome, where I saw a good deal of Lord Calthorpe, a very religious man who opened his room to the English, wherever he might be, for public worship.16

Choice’. Doddridge’s Correspondence and Diary (5 vols., 1829–31) was edited by his great-grandson. 7 William Wilberforce (b. Hull 1759—d. 1833), the campaigner against slavery and philanthropist, MP for Yorkshire, was the leading layman of the Clapham sect. 8 Venn states that he matriculated at Trinity, 22 Jan. 1816, aged 18; BA 1821; MA 1824. 9 Charles Simeon (1759-1836), evangelical divine; educ. Eton and King’s, Camb. (fellow); friend of Henry (sr) and his son, John Venn; rector of Holy Trinity, Camb.; a founder of the CMS in 1797. 10 Sir John Kennaway (1797–1873), 2nd bt., m. Emily, dau. of Thomas Kingscote. He was the son of a nabob, John Kennaway (1758–1836), a capt. of infantry in the East India Co. and ADC to Governor-General Cornwallis. He conducted a mission to the Nyzam of Hyderabad, whom he induced to make a treaty against Tipu Sultan, for which he was cr. a baronet 1791. He bought the estate at Escott, Ottery St Mary, Devon. The 3rd bt., also John Kennaway, was president of the CMS. See below 11 Henry Venn (1796–1860), evangelical divine, son of John Venn, rector of Clapham, grandson of Henry Venn; educ. Queens’, Camb. (fellow); hon. sec. of the CMS. 12 Henry Venn Elliott (1792–1865), evangelical minister, son of Charles Elliott of Clapham by Eling, dau. of Henry Venn; educ. Trin. Coll., Camb. (fellow); incumbent at St Mary’s, Brighton. ‘He suffered from overwork, and in July 1817 set out to recover his health by a foreign tour, which extended to Greece, Constantinople and Jerusalem…’ (DNB.) 13 Edward Bishop Elliott (1793–1875), evangelical divine, 2nd son of Charles Elliott; educ. Trinity Coll., Camb. (fellow); joined his brother on tour to Italy and Greece (to spring 1819); incumbent of St Mark’s, Brighton; author of Horae Apocalypticae (1844) and various works on the interpretation of prophecy. 14 Frederick William, 2nd marquess of Bristol (1800–1864); MP for Bury St Edmunds 1826-59; Treasurer of the Household; PC. 15 Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), first baron Macaulay, the historian, was educ. at Trinity Coll., Camb. He was son of Zachary Macaulay, a leading member of the Clapham sect. 16 George, 3rd baron Calthorpe (1787–1851), carried the gold spurs at the Coronation of George IV. (His father, Henry Calthorpe (1749–1798), MP for Bramber, was cr. Baron 1796.)

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1818

In October I went back to Cambridge, but gave up reading for honours. I assisted in establishing a [Church Missionary] Association among the

Undergraduates, and with Thornton, Kennaway, Baptist Noel,17 and others, made a successful stand against the shameful mode of conducting the Service in the College Chapel.

1819

A very happy time, especially intimate with Kennaway among others.

1821

Took my B.A. Degree. Attended Queen Caroline’s trial in the House of Lords.18 Heard Lord Brougham’s great speech.19 Went a tour into Devonshire with my brother William. Met Sir John and Lady Kennaway, their son, and two daughters at

Devonport, and returned thence to Escot and paid the Kennaways a very long visit. While I was at Escot I received a letter from Lord Calthorpe asking me to take the Curacy of Elvetham.20 I had resolved to wait an outward as well as an inward call to the office of a Minister in Christ’s Church. I accepted the offer and was ordained, and spent there the first six years of my ministry.

So ended 1821, a most important one in my life. I have never regretted the step I then took in taking orders, however ill I may have fulfilled my task.

17 Baptist Wriothesley Noel (1799–1873), 8th son of Sir Gerard Noel Noel, 2nd bt., by Diana, baroness Barham. Ordained minister; m. 1826 Jane Baillie, of Douchfour; brother of Charles Noel, 1st earl of Gainsborough. 18 The divorce trial of Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821), queen of George IV, in the House of Lords. A further case was held before the Privy Council for her right to coronation. 19 Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868), lord chancellor, advocate of parliamentary reform, orator, and co-founder of the Edinburgh Review; the ‘Brougham’ carriage was named after him. He pleaded as her attorney-general in defence of Queen Caroline. 20 Elvetham, Southampton, was the seat of the Calthorpes.

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1822

I was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Winchester, Pretyman Tomline,21 who had confirmed me and ordained me Deacon. As the Bishop did not ‘lodge’ us, we were in the Inn which was full of candidates, many of whom were very noisy in the evening.

The Bishop requiring it, we were all powdered in the morning previous to Ordination. The Bishop told me he was ready to ordain me on the report of the Examiner, his only question being, ‘pray how is my Lord Calthorpe?’. The Service was very solemn. The poor old Bishop was so greatly affected that he could not proceed for some time.

1827

I now enter on another most important step in my life, namely an offer to go to the Parish of Bagpath with Owlpen Chapel annexed, the parish adjoining Kingscote. Col. [Robert] Kingscote, the proprietor, is an old man, a bachelor, and resides with his sister-in-law, the widow of his brother, and a family of three sons and two daughters.22 She is an earnest Christian, most anxious for her own sake and for her children, dependents and other poor neighbours that some one will come to Bagpath who will preach Evangelical truth and care for souls.

There was every sort of complication in it, but I felt the urgency of the case and did not give a decided refusal, but sought direction of God in prayer, and of friends in consultation. It seemed to me a kind of call to a missionary station and to aid a Christian woman, whose aim was the Glory of Jesus and the good of souls.

My family were all against my leaving Elvetham for such a cure and the very thinking of it was considered quixotic. I was to live at Ashcroft and

21 Sir George Pretyman Tomline (1750–1827), tutor, intimate friend, private secretary and biographer to William Pitt the Younger; son of George Pretyman, of Bury St Edmunds; tutor at Pembroke, Camb; successively bishop of Lincoln, dean of St Paul’s and bishop of Winchester; author of Elements of Christian Theology (1799) for candidates for ordination; established claim to a Nova Scotia baronetcy. 22 Colonel Robert Kingscote, b. 15 Apr 1754; d. 1840. His yr brother and heir, Thomas L.P. Kingscote, married in 1794 Harriet, daughter of Sir Henry Dashwood Peyton, of Doddington, Ely, by Frances, sister of 1st earl of Stradbroke and dau. of Sir John Rous Bt. They had 3 sons, Thomas Henry, Henry Robert (1802–1862) (philanthropist, see DNB.) and Robert, and 2 daughters, Emily Frances (m. John Kennaway and d. 1858) and Caroline Marianne (m. the author of the Memoir, A.G. Cornwall).

Col. Thomas Henry Kingscote m. 1 Lady Isabella Somerset (d. Jan. 1831), by whom he had (Robert) Nigel Fitzhardinge Kingscote (b. 1830); he m. 2 Harriet Bloomfield, dau. of the 1st Lord Bloomfield, by whom he had 5 sons and 3 daus; Thomas Henry succeeded to the Kingscote estates, and d. 1861.

For the Kingscote family, see H.P.R. Finberg, ‘Three Studies of Family History: Kingscote of Kingscote’, Gloucestershire Studies, Leicester, 1957, pp. 159–73. For genealogy, see Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1952 ed., pp. 1441-3 (inaccurate in many details).

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pay rent for £100 for it. It had not been lived in for some years and looked most desolate. I declined the offer, but Mrs. Kingscote would not be put off and wrote pressingly and repeatedly and feelingly of the spiritual destitution of her family and tenantry. I wonder why I did not give a decided and final refusal. I should have done so had not the love of souls greatly constrained me. I went to Kingscote, and I judged the call from God and agreed to hold the living till Robert Kingscote, a boy then at school, should take orders. So I returned wondering at the way the Lord had led me, for it was He who had ordered it all.

I had no wish to leave my dear little flock at Elvetham and God knows I was now induced to move for His name’s sake. I had never even asked the value of the benefice.

On September 27th, I left my mother’s house and travelled by Stroud Mail, a cold wet night, on the outside, and between Fairford and Faringdon the coach was upset and I was thrown off on a high heap or bank on the roadside: I only hurt my right knee a little. The upset was caused by the coachman racing the Stroud Night Coach. A branch mail to Minchinhampton and thence to Wotton brought me to a spot called The Firs where I alighted and walked to Ashcroft.

Certainly this was not a propitious commencement, I well remember how disagreeable the walk was that dull morning, the roads (none the best) running with water from the heavy rain of the night and I crossed the little brook like Jacob of old, with my staff only and often as I cross it now do I say with wonder and praise, ‘now am I become two bands’.

I dined that evening at Kingscote House23 and was received with much kindness, attention and consideration. In the course of the evening, Mrs. Kingscote said to me, ‘I think it right to tell you what my sons, Tom and Henry have said, lest you should bye and bye feel hurt’. It was to this effect—‘Well, mother, I suppose we must go and hear the new parson at Bagpath to-morrow, but we do not intend to continue to go to Bagpath, and shall be quite satisfied to attend at Kingscote on old “Spanking” ’ (the nickname of Mr. Panting, the Curate of Beverstone and Kingscote).

The Kingscote family consisted of three sons and two daughters, Colonel Kingscote the proprietor living as a lodger with his sister-in-law, a family of Wedgwood24 occupying the house (called The Cottage25) which he had formerly built for himself, and inhabited for some years. It was not their Parish Church so I ought not to expect them to attend. Dear Mrs.

23 The house was demolished in 1951. The stables dated 1862 remain. 24 John Wedgwood (1766–1844) (eldest son of Josiah, the potter) was a partner in the pottery firm and a founder member in 1800 of the Royal Horticultural Society. 25 The house was latterly known as ‘The Grange’. Following the sale of the estate by the Kingscote family in 1956, after continuous occupation by them since C12, and the demolition of Kingscote Park (or ‘House’), it became known as the successor ‘Kingscote Park’.

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Kingscote, how earnestly she did travail in birth again with those sons! They were all three ungodly and thoughtless.

Robert, for whom I had the living, was with a private tutor, Rev. W. Havergal,26 but I think now at home; Henry, the second, was also on a visit shooting, but as a junior partner in the Bank of his cousin, he lived in the Bank Buildings, London. Tom, the eldest, had been in the Guards, the Coldstreams, with dear William Cornwall [the author’s brother], and was reduced as William Cornwall was, after the Peace of 1818, and had now retired on half pay, and was living with his Mother, hunting and shooting, and attending to the little farm she rented for the convenience of the house. He was a man of very violent temper, proud and hasty, but affectionate and generous to a fault; of great stature, nearly, if not quite six foot five inches, and of beautiful proportion. His brother Henry was nearly as tall and of a handsome countenance. On Sunday they all appeared at Bagpath Church. I preached there in the morning to a crowd, who came to hear the new Rector. Nothing could have been smaller than the attendance usually, eight being considered a large congregation. It was not to be wondered at, as the services were irregularly performed, and more than once the late unhappy incumbent had given money to the few old women whom he found to go away, to save himself the trouble of reading and preaching.

I went in the afternoon to Owlpen, but mistook my way, and was late. I had not been at the Chapel before. The usual service was once a month, and that very irregularly. The population at this time, larger than Bagpath, was nearly 400;27 chiefly weavers or those employed in the Uley Cloth Mills and mostly by Mr. Ed. Sheppard.

I found that the Clerk and others were gone to Uley Church, but the churchwarden had the bell rung and the Clerk sent for and it seems a whisper ran round Uley Church and many came out, and in half an hour the little Chapel was overfilled, and I preached to them from the lesson of the day, Ezek. xiii, 10, 11, a sermon, the text of which many have reminded me of to this day at Owlpen. I found the Chapel wonderfully small and in a sad state of decay and neglect; and strange to say, even of this small building, nearly half was unprovided with either pews or benches of any sort, and to this vacant part the desk was turned, whilst the Songsters (as the singers called themselves) sat within the Communion rails, making use of the table for their hats and instruments and books.

26 William Havergal, of Astley, Worcs, was from a distinguished Anglican clerical family. He was involved in the revival of English hymnody; and father of Frances R. Havergal (1836–1879), the hymnographer and poet, who wrote the lines: ‘Thy will be done is not a sigh, but only a song’. His grandson, William Henry Martin Havergal, was founder of the Anglican Sodality of the Most Holy Rosary. 27 This is an exaggeration. The census gives 255 for 1831 (its maximum), 94 for 1841, and 82 for 1851. The figures for Uley are also stark: 2,641 for 1831 and 1,713 for 1841.

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I was received with much warmth of feeling and kindliness and my first impressions of my flock were highly interesting and favourable. I had the desk turned before the next Sunday and benches were soon supplied.

And so began, the work continued. I was getting settled in my home and visiting from house to house, being by degrees a little acquainted with the flock.

A small school existed at Owlpen, which had been set on foot by some of the Misses Sheppard.28 This we re-organized and enlarged. After a while too, I commenced a school at Bagpath, fitting up the stable of the Glebe House for the purpose, for though a school existed at Kingscote, and Mrs. Kingscote would receive the children of Bagpath, very few went to it.

The attendance at the Church and Chapel (where I had a weekly instead of a monthly service alternately with that at Bagpath) was constantly large and I began to perceive that the Lord had a people waiting for the message of the Gospel. Indeed many were aroused, and flew ‘as doves to their windows’. Knowing however, the darkness, especially at Bagpath, I laid myself out to convince instrumentally of sin and that both by pressing the just demands of God’s righteous law, as well as by exhibiting the demands as met on the cross.

One thing particularly interested me. Tom Kingscote was always at Bagpath, and not infrequently at Owlpen, and it pleased a gracious saviour that a sermon which I preached at the latter place (on Rev. xx, 11 to end) arrested him ; convincing him of his desert and his danger. (This sermon I preached at Gloster Assize when I was Chaplain to Tom Kingscote, he being Sheriff, at his request, and it was printed by request of the bar.)

I was never more struck: he was like a stricken deer, the arrow of conviction in his heart. It so happened that he and his sister Emily had driven down and offered me a lift to the hills, and so assured was I that the Word had come to his conscience, from his demeanour as we drove to Kingscote that on alighting I expressed to her my hopes. What was my delight, when I received a note from her next day saying that he had asked her whether she thought she could get him a copy of the sermon, taking care, however, that none should know he wished to have it. Most gladly was it sent to her.

From that day the work of grace began to manifest itself and dear Mrs. Kingscote began to see her desires accomplished as regards one of her sons. She herself through much affliction had been led to seek and find salvation

28 The indefatigable daughters of Edward Sheppard collected funds to extend the Uley National School. Sydney in his Life of Rowland Hill (p. 311) records: The praiseworthy exertions and talents of Miss Sheppard produced a sufficient profit, from the sale of the portrait of Mr. Hill, to enable her to lay the foundation-stone of a spacious room at Uley, in the autumn of 1827, which was opened in the spring of 1828. The school consists of about one hundred and sixty infants and fifty girls; the building is also used as a Sunday school for three hundred children.

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in Jesus Christ and her daughters were seriously minded, feeling after truth, and more or less partakers of the Believer’s Hope and Peace.

I cannot omit to notice the great kindness I experienced at the hands of dear Mrs. Kingscote and indeed all the family. I was a constant guest at the table, and spent many hours of a morning especially with Mrs. Kingscote whose heart was full of love and gratitude: and now this change in Tom Kingscote knit him also to me.

1828

I had early commenced lectures at Bagpath, Owlpen and Coccadilly, an outlying hamlet of Owlpen, notoriously neglected and wicked. This latter lecture was at 8 o’clock on Tuesday, and very well attended. Dear Mrs. Kingscote nearly always drove her little chaise there, and was deeply interested in the work. I generally walked, and often by her. My Bagpath lecture was held in the Old Glebe House, occupied by an infirm aged blind man named Whittard. I found attendance very scant, and was induced to try how far they might be drawn together by reading Pilgrim’s Progress in short portions with comments and applications. This therefore I did, and the plan was most successful. Many came to hear the story who would not come to hear the Scriptures. It took about nine months to get through it, and when I concluded, at the request of the meeting, I recommenced. Many, I hope, were edified.

Bagpath was in a very dark state. How could it be otherwise? Old Rowland Hill,29 who resided at Wotton-under-Edge, told me that it was the only place in the neighbourhood where he and his Deacons could not get a footing, and he added that it would be marvellous indeed if anything could be effected in it. They had attempted to hold Cottage Meetings, but such was the row, together with the extinguishing of light, etc., that they had always been driven out. I met, however, with no insults and no

29 Rev. Rowland Hill (1745–1833), the 6th son of Sir Rowland Hill, Bt., evangelist minister and hymnographer,and brother of Sir Richard Hill, Bt., some of whose correspondence is preserved at Owlpen. He was educ. Shrewsbury, Eton and St John’s, Cambridge; itinerant preacher; opened the Surrey Chapel in London 1783; helped found the London Missionary Society. On the evening of 16th June 1771, he rode into Wotton-under-Edge for the first time and preached to huge crowds under the market hall. He returned to Wotton a few months later and bought a site above the town, where he built a chapel, known as The Tabernacle (1783; but a nameboard claims the foundation as 1771), and a house for himself. At Wotton, Mr. Hill lived in what he called ‘a paradisiacal spot’, having his house near the chapel, and lovely scenery all around.

He says of the village, ‘This place, when I first knew Gloucestershire, was filled with brutal persecutors; since they have been favored with the gospel they have been wonderfully softened’. He facetiously styled himself ‘Rector of Surrey Chapel, Vicar of Wotton, and Curate of all the fields and lanes throughout England and Wales.’ Hill was a supporter of the pioneer discoverer of vaccination, Edward Jenner (whose marriage to Catherine Kingscote is commemorated by a plaque in Kingscote church porch).

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outward or violent opposition. The place, indeed, was full of iniquity, and almost nightly there was some drunken row, whilst affrays were taking place constantly with the poachers, by whom one man was killed. Still the people listened, and some of them were manifestly converted.

I was obliged to dismiss my Parish Clerk, a notorious drunkard, and appointed a young man, James Scur, had been given to me as a seal. I was obliged constantly to rebuke and reprove, whilst in several cases the ignorance of the aged seemed and proved insurmountable.

At Owlpen, the Chapel was crowded, the people very eager to hear, and a great work was wrought by the Lord—the Spirit. The people clamoured also for an enlargement of the building, and during the year, amidst very considerable difficulties, the work was carried out.30

In the course of the Spring, Lady Isabella Somerset, a daughter of the 6th Duke of Beaufort,31 gave her hand to Tom Kingscote. She was a sweet and interesting character, and truly devoted to the Lord. They took up their residence at The Cottage, the Wedgwoods leaving. Tom Kingscote was now united to one calculated to be very useful to him, and he was also brought into intimate connection with the good Duchess of Beaufort. My intimacy with Lord Edward Somerset at Ivor, and at Claybrook, naturally drew Lady Isabella and myself a good deal together, and we became friends. He, Lord Edward, had died while an undergraduate at Oxford, giving blessed evidence of faith and enjoying peace.

I also, not unnaturally, became attached to Miss Caroline Marianne Kingscote and we were united in holy matrimony at Kingscote Church, my old friend and tutor. Rev. Ed[ward] Ward, officiating.32 My dear mother and sisters, together with my dear brother William, attended and paid a visit of some days to the Kingscotes. Nothing could be more kind than dear Mrs. Kingscote and old Colonel Kingscote during my courtship and marriage. Everything, I may say, was done and said to make me feel how sincerely they received me into their family.

Perhaps I ought here to say my dear wife was the youngest daughter of T.L.P. Kingscote, Esq., who having made his fortune in Civil Service, India, had married Harriet, daughter of Sir [Henry Dashwood] Peyton of Doddington, Bart. After residing some years in Hants, near Alton, they, at the request of the elder brother Robert, Colonel Kingscote, removed to Kingscote, and coming resided in the house, he (Colonel Kingscote) building the Cottage for his own residence. Mr. Kingscote lived but a few

30 The vesty meeting resolved against the proposed enlargement of Owlpen chapel (D2078/BOX 6/4). 31 Lady Isabella Frances Ann (d. 1831), dau. of Henry Charles, 6th duke of Beaufort, KG. 32 He published his funeral sermon to Ward: Recollections of an address delivered at the funeral of the Rev. Edward Ward, A.M., minister of Iver, Bucks, on Saturday 28th March, 1835 (Hatchard, 1835).

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years after his coming into Gloucestershire, and his widow was on the point of leaving, but was so persuaded by Colonel Kingscote not to do so, as he intended to make her eldest son his heir, the Colonel being unmarried, and so she remained at Kingscote and after several years Colonel Kingscote took his lodgings in her house and the Cottage was tenanted by the Wedgwoods.

I was appointed by the Mayor and Corporation of Wotton-under-Edge to a lectureship in the Church.

We spent a clergyman’s week at Malvern Wells and then settled at Ashcroft.

Of course we were very much at Kingscote and dear Mrs. Kingscote with us, but I fear I hardly acted as I ought to dear Carrie seeing I still held my lectures, leaving her constantly by herself, of necessity, and I also took a tour for the Church Missionary Society. Towards the close of the year I was instrumental in founding a C.M. Association for this neighbourhood entitled for ‘Uley and its Vicinity’; Colonel Kingscote being President and Tom Kingscote and several other gentlemen Vice-Presidents.

Our first meeting was very fully attended and we collected upwards of £4, before Christmas had several branches in the union and remitted £140 to the parent society: Rev. M.W. Williams, Rector of Uley, and I becoming hon. secretaries. I think that previously some £30 per annum would have covered the remittances of the neighbourhood. I also in concert with Ed Escourt, Rector of Long Newnton, and others formed a clerical meeting of like-minded evangelical men. We found it very pleasant and profitable. We met at each other’s houses.

1829

March llth, we were blessed in the birth of a dear little girl. We named her after her two grandmammas, Susan and Harriet.

Owlpen Church was rebuilt this year, but the result was not altogether satisfactory owing to lack of funds.33 The work of God throve, however, in both Bagpath and Owlpen, especially in the latter. Many were added to the Church, both men and women.

I took a tour of some weeks in Cornwall for C.M.S. in the autumn, dear Carry and babe going to her mother’s. It was during this tour that the Lord pleased to work effectually on the heart of a man in Bagpath called James Dew. He had been a notoriously wicked man, and as he always confessed, had always managed to avoid me, so that I had never spoken to him, till now when he was taken very ill. I was then unfortunately (as it seemed to me) engaged to go to Cornwall for C.M.S. As this was the case, I asked

33 The church was rebuilt 1828–32 (Verey) to the designs of Samuel Manning, with the present wide nave; it has a coved plaster ceiling with a panelled grille of moulded wood with carved foliate bosses.

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Tom Kingscote to look in and read to him. He did so, and his doing so was the instrument the Holy Spirit employed to touch the man’s heart. Tom Kingscote read and prayed with him and as Dew had known and seen much of Tom Kingscote before his conversion, seeing Dew looked after the Squire’s walls round his preserves, and had often come under the lash of his tongue: he was altogether astonished and meditatively said to himself, ‘The doctor and all say I am dying and I hear that reading the Bible has made this change in the Squire, I will read it too.’ And so the Lord wrought and never was more [15] striking change. I, after his decease, wrote and published a narration of the case, entitled Nature and Grace.

1830

July 13th, my dear wife gave birth to a son whom we named Alan Kingscote.34

I do not remember anything particular occurring at Owlpen. The Lord’s work progressed rapidly and a very interesting congregation was forming. The attendance on my ministry increased rather than diminished.

1831

We spent our Christmas at Kingscote, and our visit ran into February, for dear Mrs. Kingscote could never find the day to let dear Carry leave. Late in January, Lady I. Kingscote was confined at Badminton of a little girl and doing well, but on February 4th we were summoned to her bedside and ere night she died.35 She had taken pueperal fever. She wished to receive the Holy Communion and desired that I should administer it. Col. Kingscote, Emily Kingscote and myself went over there, through deep snow. It was a most affecting sight, the family round her bed partook with her. She was perfectly calm and collected, quite aware of her danger and ready to depart. She had spoken to her father and brothers, and had several of the servants up, to each of whom she addressed something appropriate. Nothing could be more solemn, or humanly speaking, more calculated to impress. We returned home. The Lord took her that night to Himself. She left a boy

34 Alan Kingscote Cornwall, MA (1830–1913) was rector of Kingscote with Newington Bagpath. (On 27 Oct. 1862, he assisted at the marriage in Leckhampton, Glos, of Rose, youngest daughter of William Plunkett, to Thomas Anthony Stoughton of Owlpen and Ballyhorgan.) 35 Their first child, who succeeded to the estate (of 3,956 acres in 1873), was Sir (Robert) Nigel FitzHardinge Kingscote (b. 28 Feb. 1830—d. 1908), MP for W. Glos 1852-, who m. 1st Caroline Sophia (d. 1852), dau. of Geo., 1st Lord Leconfield, and m. 2nd 1856 Lady Emily Marie Curzon, dau. of Richard, 1st earl Howe. He was 1854 ADC to his maternal uncle, Lord Raglan, in Crimea (where he served at the battles of Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman and the siege of Sevastopol); CB and Lt-Col. Scots Fusilier Guards. He was succeeded by Nigel Richard Fitzharding Kingscote, who d.s.p.m. 24 Nov. 1921.

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about eighteen months old, and the infant whom I subsequently baptized at Badminton, by name of Isabella. She grew up to woman’s estate and became the wife of Capt. Martin of Sligo, Ireland.

I was a good deal with Tom Kingscote during the week before the funeral at Badminton. The affliction was, I think, greatly blessed to him, drawing him more out of the world, and nearer to the Saviour. I did not sleep at Badminton, but rode there and back.

My dear Mother and Sister Augusta paid us a visit this autumn, William also in August.

In August this year I preached for C.M.S. in Hants. At the end of August, I married Emily Kingscote to my old friend John

Kennaway. He had paid me a visit last Autumn, lost his heart, and thought he could not do better than follow my example. He found an excellent, well-informed and suitable wife, and she a thoroughly good young man.

In the autumn of 1831, my dear Mother, Augustus Cornwall and his wife paid us a visit.

1832

I preached a sermon, I may say, for some of the schools this year, in the neighbourhood of Painswick.

We paid a visit to the John Kennaways at Budleigh Salterton, where they resided in a pleasant villa belonging to Sir John Kennaway in the country.

In the autumn, whilst nominally there, I did some C.M.S. work in the country. Little Alan was with us: Susan with her Grandmother at Kingscote: my wife’s health the chief reason of her absence.

In July, I took a C.M.S. tour in Stafford and Warwick. The Lord’s work was more and more manifest, especially at Owlpen and not only was the Chapel fully attended, but many became communicants and the people were wonderfully knit together and to myself in the Lord. Our services were very delightful to me, and I was welcome in the cottages, the weavers leaving their looms to hear the Word, and talk of the things of God.

1833

We spent Christmas, and January and February at Kingscote. Lectures, etc., went on as usual through the winter. I never allowed my visit to Kingscote, or the rain, to hinder. I do not remember that I was ever absent from Owlpen or Bagpath on the Week-day Evening, and I had also (with the permission of the Curate of Kingscote) a lecture there in the School Room. There appeared to be an awakening also at Kingscote, and I believe several individuals were savingly taught. I visited often in Kingscote, with Mrs. Kingscote, in cases of sickness, the Curate, who resided at Beverstone, never coming to Kingscote during the week.

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The change wrought in Tom Kingscote so struck his brother Henry that it was blessed to his own Spiritual Health. ‘There really must be something in religion,’ was his reflection, ‘seeing what has been done in Tom.’

In April Caroline was expecting to be confined again, and on the 9th her mother and nurse arrived. There was a funeral at 6 p.m. at Owlpen, and having been on horseback all morning, I walked there, promising to be back as soon as possible. After the funeral, however, the Clerk informed me that a man at the ‘Ragged’, a cottage in the wood above Owlpen, named Harry Sherwood, had been taken seriously ill, and desired to see me. It was thought he would not live, and thither I went and must have sat a long hour with him. He was very anxious about his soul, and unwilling that I should leave him. It was now dark, and a cloudy night, so asking the nearest way home, I set off through the wood towards Latterwood Pike. Taking a leap off a new laid hedge, it so gave way that I did not reach the opposite bank, but alighted on the side of the ditch, fell back and broke my leg just above the ankle. I was not aware of what had occurred, and getting on my legs attempted to walk, when, my foot turning round, I became aware of the injury, and suffering great pain, nearly fainted. I laid myself on my back, and rain falling I was refreshed, and sat up. It struck ten at Uley Mill at the moment. I called out lustily, but in vain. I was on the hill and no one heard me. I tied my foot to my leg as well as possible with my pocket handkerchief, happily a large India silk one, and so crawled, hands and knees, to near the Pike, occupying one hour in the work, and suffering much. At the Pike I sent for two of Kingscote’s keepers residing near, and sent one to Kingscote for a carriage, who also was to go on to Ashcroft and say I had hurt my leg, but was coming home; the other to Dr. Williams, the Surgeon, to meet me at Ashcroft. In about three quarters of an hour Tom Kingscote arrived for me. He had just returned home from dining at the Ridge, Mr. E. Sheppard’s (where he met Miss Bloomfield, to whom he had proposed, and was accepted) and came off immediately for me, assist-ing me into the drawing room not to alarm more than possible, and then carrying me to my bed. Williams arrived shortly and set the broken bone.

Thank God’s goodness, Mrs. Kingscote being in the house, Caroline was kept quiet and in a measure prepared, and we were all thankful that it was a simple fracture and no worse. I can never forget Tom Kingscote’s kindness and sympathy.

The Owlpen folk especially were greatly moved when they heard of it, and on every side I experienced all attention. It was no slight advantage to enjoy the good nursing of Mrs. Kingscote and Caroline’s monthly nurse, Mrs. Stace, till 21st inst., when she was brought to bed of a girl, whom we afterwards baptized as ‘Caroline Augusta’ (later Mrs. J.C. Bengough).36 The

36 Caroline Augusta (d. 1899) m. 1857 John Charles Bengough of The Ridge, Wotton-under-Edge, eldest surviving son of George Bengough, who purchased The Ridge from

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leg progressed rapidly and I rather enjoyed the season of rest and the much time for reading. I remember that among other books, I re-read Leighton on Peter, a work that had been for many years a great favourite with me.37

During my confinement I had a visit from Harriet Bloomfield, so soon to become Tom Kingscote’s second wife, and his comforter and sympathising friend till his decease.38 I was on my crutches before Caroline left her room, but I believe I should have recovered more perfectly by a less early move. The bone knit, however, so soon that the Surgeon sanctioned the use of crutches. In six weeks I resumed my duties in Church, sitting at the desk during the services.

Owlpen Manor House and Church, engraving about 1845

Edward Sheppard. George was the son of the Rev. George Bengough of Hawkesbury and the heir to his uncle Henry Bengough, a solicitor and a partner in a Bristol bank, who had invested successfully in a printing works.

Sons of the marriage in addition to Alan Kingscote Cornwall (b. 1830) were Clement Francis Cornwall (1836–1910), who became third Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, Canada; John Fitzalan Cornwall (ordained); and Henry Pennant Cornwall. The latter with his brother Clement Francis pre-empted 160 acres each in the arid Thompson country of British Columbia. In due course, they acquired a total of 6,452 acres in the vicinity of Ashcroft Ranch and were described as the largest and most successful stock-raisers in the province (C.F. Cornwall obituary in Victoria Colonist, 10 Feb. 1910). The township they established has a population of about 1,665 (2006). 37 Dr Robert Leighton (1611–1684), archbishop of Glasgow, author of A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle General of Saint Peter, published after his death. 38 Harriet (d. 1901), dau. of 1st lord Bloomfield, of Ciamaltha, Tipperary, to which estate Randolph Albert Fitzhardinge Kingscote, eldest son of FitzHardinge Kingscote, succeeded.

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1837

Was a season of great distress and trial for all this neighbourhood. My dear flock at Owlpen were among the sufferers. Mr. Sheppard, one of the first clothiers in the West of England, who had a manufactory at Uley and who found employment for nearly all the families at Owlpen, failed.39 Nothing could be more distressing. The improvident weavers were left, almost to a man, utterly destitute. I was obliged to engage to pay the bakers, or whole families would have starved. In Owlpen whole families came on the rates, which ran up from eighteen to twenty shillings in the pound. My sympathies were greatly drawn out to them. I spoke frequently on the precious promises to the chastened and tried. I think many were confirmed in the faith.

Soon after this I had a nervous breakdown and took a house in Clifton and sent the children to Kingscote, where they were most kindly cared for by their grand-mother, dear Mrs. Kingscote. After a driving tour to Dorchester, etc., we came to the most hospitable Escot Lodge, where we spent the whole winter, receiving the greatest consideration and kindness. We enjoyed the most valued ministry of the Rev. P. Douglas, incumbent of Escot Chapel.

The new house was in course of erection, and during the winter, I laid out and planted the shrubberies behind the building and called it ‘The Rookery’. This afforded me interest and amusement of outdoor exercise without fatigue of my nerves and strength. Books were forbidden, and I amused myself with my needle producing a cushion for my dear Emily Kennaway.

So a very trying year closed. On New Year’s Day I was able to take part in a Prayer Meeting at the School Room by Douglas’s pressing request. I began to feel ere long, with God’s good blessing, I might go home again and get to work.

1838

Returned home. Recommenced ministry.

39 Edward Sheppard, whose family were from Frome Selwood, Somerset, from 1789 traded under the name of Sheppard & Hicks, clothiers, employing nearly 1,000 people locally. His father sold Gatcombe Park and moved to Uley House, c. 1745. Edward purchased The Ridge estate in 1800, by 1825 completing a house to the designs of Geo. Repton for £23,000. He was declared bankrupt in 1837 and forced to sell his house and factory at Uley; the latter on which he had recently spent £50,000 was sold for £2,300. (J. Tann, Gloucestershire Woollen Mills, 1967, p. 56.)

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1839

The Benefice of Beverstone cum Cappella de Kingscote fell vacant. The Kingscotes were most desirous that I should be presented to it. There were many eager competitors, the principal, Lord Ducie, who was anxious to obtain it for his brother-in-law, the Rev. R. Barker. The Bishop (Monk) as I understood since, also wished it for a friend. No doubt many others did the same. I believe the persevering energy of Henry Kingscote instrumentally led to my nomination by the Crown, or rather Lord Melbourne, the then Prime Minister. Lord Segrave (since Lord Fitzhardinge)40 kindly threw his powerful influence into the Kingscote scale. It is remarkable that I find in an entry in my brother’s (William) journal that King William had promised my mother that I should be presented to it if it fell vacant during his life, but it did not. Of her application I was ignorant. Lady Suffield who was intimate with Lord Melbourne, kindly interested herself with me now.41 However the ‘disposal is with the Lord’, and I was nominated.

The contiguity of the parishes, the small population of Beverstone (under 200) and the desire that I should minister at Kingscote, overcame some scruples which I had to hold a plurity of Benefices, it being evident that by appointing two Curates, one to Owlpen and one to Beverstone, the population ought to be even more tended than they had been or could be under other circumstances.

Here I must notice the Lord’s providential goodness to us. I took Bagpath to hold it for Robert Kingscote, should he take orders. This, however, he did not do. [He] went up to Oxford (I taking him up) but I do not think he remained there a year as he wished to go into the army, and his uncle purchased him a commission in the Lancers. Thus I became settled at Bagpath, and that I might not be disturbed in possession of Ashcroft House, Col. Kingscote most kindly settled it on me as long as I should be Incumbent of the parish, giving us also the furniture in the house, and now Beverstone was added to my income, the Lord thus meeting the growing needs of my rapidly increasing family and enabling us to live still in the

40 William FitzHardinge Berkeley (1786—d. unm. 1857) was the owner of Berkeley Castle and its estates and also lord of the manor of Kingscote. He was the son of Frederick Augustus, earl of Berkeley, by the dairy maid Mary Cole. On his father’s death in 1810, he petitioned the House of Lords for a writ of summons as a peer, but failed to prove that he was born in wedlock; he was cr. 1831 at the coronation of William IV baron Segrave and in 1841 earl FitzHardinge. 41 Charlotte Suzannah Gardner (1810–1855), only dau. of the author’s maternal uncle, Alan Hyde Gardner, 2nd baron Gardner of Uttoxeter, who m. 1835 Edward Vernon Harbord, baron Suffield, of Gunton Hall, Norfolk.

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enjoyments and comforts we had been accustomed to, and to do many things for the parishes we could not otherwise have done.

And here let me speak of the Lord’s disposals. I came to Bagpath (‘I speak the truth, I lie not. God is my witness’) uninfluenced by any secular motive whatever. I am conscious of having had but one desire, to take a neglected Mission post where I hoped I might be of some use, the Lord giving me His blessing.

I did so in opposition to the advice of worldly friends who thought I should injure my interests with Lord Calthorpe and bury myself alive in an out of the way place. The latter perhaps, I have done. But I came here to serve God in what the path He pointed out, and I have always felt that if He chose to move me, He would make the opening. But He had, no doubt for the wisest ends as regards myself, kept me in a small and retired sphere. Yet he has given me a great many blessings, never forgotten me, supplied all my wants.

I do not exactly remember when, but I had a dream which made a great impression on my mind and more so of late years, because my study of prophecy leads me to believe that the dream and the future will be found to agree with one another.

I dreamed that, engaged in my ordinary duties, all of a sudden my attention was arrested by a loud and shrill sound of a trumpet and the appearance of Christ in the clouds of Heaven He was accompan-ied by a very large and glorious company. I can never forget the anxiety of the question which flashed across my mind, ‘Am I His, and am I ready?’—nor the unspeakable satisfaction which was almost immediately granted me in the fact of my being ‘changed’ and ‘caught up in the air’ to join the blessed company of Saints.’ Of my reception and presentation by and to Jesus, I have no remembrance. Indeed I think no such appeared in my dream to take place. I was joyful in the midst of the joyful whose object seemed to be His Glory.

What particularly engaged me was the constant accession to our numbers. We seemed to be making a tour of the Globe, if I may so speak, in the air, and at every instant some joined the company, rising from the earth, and the train of the Lord became exceedingly great. At length no more joined us and we then appeared to rise beyond the habitable Globe, and take what I can only describe as a triumphant tour or journey through the Universe, Jesus the one object of praise, and the triumph His, and we His trophies.

I do not remember that I recognised individuals. I seemed to know every one and to have the most delightful oneness of spirit with all.

How long the progress took I did not understand or remember. It appeared to me when I awoke that it had occupied several years. But at the end of the time we re-visited the earth, and what then delighted my spirit was that whereas before we left it, no accession had been made for some time to our number (which I remember had troubled me) now an

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innumerable company rose from every part of the habitable Globe, of those who had, in the interval, believed to Salvation.

So I awoke, full of joy and thankfulness. Now I believe that the Revelation of St. John and other prophecies shadow forth these blessed hopes, and especially the latter half of the dream.

I believe that when the wise virgins are caught up to go with the Lord to the Marriage Supper, their rapture will be the means of conversion and quickening to myriads, who, though they will suffer persecutions and troubles, perhaps martyrdom, under the great tribulation, will hold fast to the faith, and be added to the Church above.

These are most encouraging thoughts, especially in reference to one’s own family. It may be that some of them may not be found ready at first, who will nevertheless afterwards be saved ‘as by fire’. The end draws near when these things shall take place. I write in 65. Oh that the infinite and unspeakably precious Blood of Atonement may be applied savingly to the souls of my dear belongings!

1840

At Clifton for some unknown cause, I also was brought into much suffering from the mucous membrane in the lower part of my body, and came under the care of a surgeon who, I think, did me more harm than good. I shall never forget the exquisite suffering when preaching one Sunday at St. James’s Church. From this malady I continually have suffered, as many, I find, do, but in the latter part of my life nature appears to have righted herself, for at this period of my life I was very busy and active, and had no end of irons in the fire, preaching constantly, and helping forward many things for the temporal and spiritual welfare, not of my parishioners only, but of the neighbourhood, etc. The sympathy of my friends during the year greatly helped me. Dr. Richards, of Gatcombe Park,42 and dear Ed[mund] W. [Estcourt], Rector of Long Newnton,43 manifested especially Christian love, not to mention my own dear relatives.

1841

42 David Ricardo, MP, the political economist, who purchased Gatcombe in 1814. The house was built c. 1771–74 for Edward Shepherd (see supra p. xxx) the clothier, and altered for Ricardo to the designs of George Basevi (a relation), c. 1820. Col. Henry Ricardo sold Gatcombe to Samuel Courtauld, a member of the textile family, from whom it was inherited in 1947 by R.A. Butler, later Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, who sold it to the Queen in 1976 as a house for The Princess Royal. 43 Edmund W. Estcourt (1782–1856), 2nd son of Thomas Estcourt of Estcourt Park (where the family had settled by C14), m. Bertha E. Wyatt, by whom he had six children. His uncle, Edmund Estcourt (d. 1802), was rector of Long Newnton before him, where the Estcourts were lords of the manor.

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Whilst at Clifton in the fall of 1841, Caroline, in stepping into Mrs. Kingscote’s fly, struck her shin against the step and injured it. This became a serious trouble, and we consulted surgeons, but no one discovered that the bone has been splintered within, and till this splinter, after many months, came away the poor thing had no rest or quiet.

I gather from my sermons that I was home all the year till November or the latter half of October.

I was most thankful to know that my Curate, Ford,44 was made a blessing to the soul of Robert Kingscote, Caroline’s youngest brother, about the time and so dear Mrs. Kingscote had great joy over her family, to whom the Lord had shown His great salvation.

1842

Thomas Kingscote being appointed Sheriff this year kindly wished me to be his Chaplain, and so [tired] as I was, I had to preach in the Cathedral, Gloster, before the Judges, etc., at the Spring Assizes.

By Kingscote’s desire, I preached the sermon which had been blessed to his awakening. My spirits was so inspired that when, during the service, the organ first played, I was well-nigh overcome, I recovered and was able to deliver my sermon with propriety and some power. It was listened to with marked attention and on the Sheriff and myself resuming our seats in the carriage with the Judges, Chief Justice Tyndale, said to his brother, Sir John Patterson, who was deaf, ‘You have had a loss, brother, in not hearing Mr. C’s sermon.’ ‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Sir John (with whom I had been acquainted near the Kennaways in Devon) ‘and what is more remarkable,’ added the Chief Justice, ‘is that neither of us I am sure heard it before.’ Enquiring what he meant, which Sir John had quite taken in, we heard that there were three or four famous Assize Sermons which they heard delivered over and over again. Mr. Justice Tyndale (who was a serious-minded man) was very complimentary on my sermon, and the next day the Bar headed by Mr. Whately begged me to print it, at their expense, which was done.

I had a kind note from Patterson afterwards, when I sent him a copy. The Bishop (Monk) was ill. I called to enquire and though he was in bed, he would have me into his room, and with tears in his eyes told me how much he felt for me in losing two dear children and I am sure he was most sincere in saying so. I had heard he had been very angry when I was appointed to Beverstone.

44 A Ford family, all females aged 40–80, were in occupation of the Manor House at the time of the 1841 census.

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Alan Gardner Cornwall died thirty years after the cessation of his memoir in

1872, aged 74.45 A commemorative plaque was placed in Newington Bagpath Church, whence it was removed for safekeeping by the present author under the supervision of David Verey, chairman of the Diocesan Advisory Committee for Faculties and the Care of Churches, when the church was declared redundant in 1977.

Owlpen House, south (garden) front by S.S. Teulon, built for Mary, the last of the Daunts, and her husband Thomas Anthony Stoughton I, on the high plateau to the east of the old manor house circa 1848. (Photograph about 1900.)

45 Venn remarks: ‘disappears from Crockford 1874’. J. Daunt, Family of Daunt (1881), states that he died ‘between two and three years ago [before the re-consecration of Owlpen church]’; i.e., 1871–2. At date of publication of Stroud edition of his memoirs, about 1872, he is described as ‘late rector of Beverstone cum Kingscote, and Newington Bagpath cum Owlpen’.